This article was written by Roy Greenslade, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 30th July 2012 09.09 UTC
The Welsh government is to review its code about council-run newspapers in the face of protests from commercial publishers that the freely distributed publications amount to unfair competition.
Research by BBC Radio Wales shows that 16 of the 22 Welsh councils together spend more than £1m a year to publish their freesheets. Of the other six, four do not produce papers, one does so online and there is no information about the sixth.
In Cardiff, 155,000 copies of the Capital Times – a free bilingual paper – are distributed to every household in the city 13 times a year. By contrast, Wrexham’s Connect magazine is a quarterly and in Conwy the Conwy Bulletin is sent out to its residents only twice a year.
The Welsh Local Government Association argues that many people find council papers useful and there is no evidence that they compete with the commercially produced local and regional papers.
A spokesman said: “They were initiated in the first place because central government required councils to locally publish performance information in a non-commercial local paper”.
Some papers do accept advertising, such as Connect, but most of the others are funded from the council’s publicity budget.
The Welsh code dates back to 2001. In England, which has had a revised code for two years aimed at preventing councils from publishing “town hall Pravdas”, communities secretary Eric Pickles has failed to stop four London councils from publishing weekly papers.
Source: BBC
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
I would be interested to know how the Caerphilly Observer views the issue and whether they consider the council newsletter as a source of competition.
Whilst the council newsletter does at times read like a propaganda sheet, there is also a lack a free newspapers within the borough. On the whole I think it serves a purpose and I at times find it useful.
There's even a lack of paid-for papers in the county borough; the paper from Merthyr never reaches me. And the free paper from Newport isn't even worth the paper it is printed on; thank goodness it is no longer distributed in this street. So the council paper is worth something, even if not much.